I was starting to get concerned about my gray matter after reading this article; so was very interested in Ginny Washburne’s Brain Friendly ideas.

In a nutshell, our brains absorb information better when we’re happy and active. Our brains are resilient and are all different, however there are many strategies included from Ginny’s DENSI2012 talk that you can use to use to activate those 50-200+ brains you work with daily.

Movement & Brain Breaks – BDNF – look into thisEric Jensen – learning with the brain in mind – 12-15 min in middle school most time without movementbrainbreaks.blogspot.com loved! rock paper scissors math
kinesthetic lectures – let students move around and then reflect after the thoughts processed during movement

Play – using the right side of the brain

“What we describe in ‘A New Culture of ]Learning’ is learning driven by the relentless pace of change. It takes place without books, without teachers, and without classrooms, and it requires environments that are bounded yet provide complete freedom of action within those boundaries. This familiar dynamic, in fact, structures all our contemporary notions of play, games, and imagination. Play can be defined as the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. But when play happens within a medium for learning—much like a culture in a petri dish—it creates a context in which information, ideas, and passions grow. Play, questioning, and imagination lie at the very heart of arc-of-life learning. They have a tremendous effect on, and resonance with, learning today. And where imaginations play, learning happens.”
—Douglas Thomas, co-author (with John Seely Brown), “A New Culture of Learning”; associate professor, University of Southern California in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
teach with tournaments – look up
use: gaming, virtual labs, experiments, stations, project based learning, digital storytelling (paper slide videos)

Feedback – during the learning process, is the single most powerful tool to enhance learning.
teacher, self, peer, community (****ask 3 then me – great idea)